Thinkpads Forum

Just bought a M50 on Fleabay to replace my M42 which has given me excellent service;but,the kids need a faster computer.And I still refuse to buy a non business/non IBM computer.so..........the M50 has 512 mb of DDR pc2700 ram.

New question:This M50 came with XP Pro COA sticker on the side.......When I bought this Did I also buy the registered copy of XP that orignally came on it?When it came it had a fresh install of W2000 on it instead.........I bought a new 100g hdd and would like XP Pro on that.I did get my hands on a retail copy and tried reinstall that but its asking for a product key and the one on the coa sticker on the side of machine doesnt work.

What I want is to set this thing up legal and Find how to get a copy to install that I could just reregister within 30 days.......thanks

T22 4me wrote:This M50 came with XP Pro COA sticker on the side.......When I bought this Did I also buy the registered copy of XP that orignally came on it?

You acquired an OEM licencse for Windows XP for that piece of hardware only. You wont be able to use the OEM licence key with a retail version of Windows XP.

Since you received the M50 with W2K on it, the hard drive has probably been repartitioned and the orginial product recovery partition deleted.

You best bet is get hold of the product recovery disks for an M50, which will install WIndows XP and the ThinkVantage driver and utility set for you, and re-install the product recovery partiion on the M50 hard disk.

Cheers,

Bill

Thanks for the reply..............I just went ahead and bought another copy of XP Pro and installed that...............activated it and everyhing seems to be cool..................I also have a Linux distro on a partition of its own as I am a believer in that..................again.......thanks